Blue Moon
by Author2
Summary: "Important is not the same as personal" C. Carrot has to choose. (fixed some erros, some of you were nice enough to point out)
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, places or anything else connected with Discworld. They belong to Terry P. And I am not making any money out of this so please don't sue. This is my first fiction, and English is not my first language, please don't flame. Prologue 

A man walks down the empty Street of Cunning Artificersin Ankh-Morpork. In any other mystery fiction, it would have been an innocent man, going on about his innocent business. He would probably even be married; perhaps he would even have a few kids. But this is Ankh-Morpork and there is nothing like the 'innocent man' or 'innocent business'.

The street is murky from decomposed autumn-leaves and his step makes a sloshing sound as he hurries down the street. It is midnight and the moon  is as ghostly gallon on the black draped sky. He knows, of course, that he should never walk alone, outside, in the dark, specially in this city, were misfortune happened to those who dared to define the laws of logic, or any other law for that matter.

However, he figured, that if someone was going to smash his scull in, it could just as well happen in the middle of the day in a crowded mob. It probably _would_ happen in the middle of, the day in a mob, so what did he have to loose.

This night, just his life.

He rounds a corner and stops, the street ahead of him is empty, and the glow from the few lampposts cuts through the darkness. From his left, there is a strange gurgling sound, almost like growling. He hesitates and casts a quick glance in the direction of the noise. There is nothing there but a dark alley, but then again dark alleys never contributed to anything good.

"I have paid the guild, you know," he says, hoping the sound of his voice will frighten whoever is growling, or calm his nerves.

Suddenly he feels a chilly wind creep up his back, and he swear he can feel an icy hand on his shoulders, he turns around and sees two glowing dots in the air, almost like eyes. He shakes his head and the image and feeling of dread disappears, and for a moment he wonders if they were ever there.

"Stop scarin' your self" he mutters and is about to continue his journey home, when something suddenly jumps towards him from the darkness.

It happens so fast; he does not even have time to notices that it happens. One moment he is standing, in the next, his breath gets knocked out of him and the road greets him as he slams down on the wet ground. 

For a moment he is still, staring up at the round moon, then he slowly stumbles to his feet and dusts some dirt off his coat. He hears the sound of somebody running and he lifts his fist in its direction and yells.

"And…..stay away from me, you hear!" then there is a moment of total silence.

"That was unpleasant," he says and is about to continue walking when the chilly wind suddenly enfolds him again and a voice speaks to him from inside his head. 

The voice thumps like, heavy iron doors closing in a very dark dungeon, and it echoes through his scull. 

"MR. CARTER"

"Oh, it's you" he did not even try to hide the disappointment in his voice. "Guess…that thing killed me then, just my luck" Mr. Carter mutters, and for the first time noticed his body lying on the soggy pavement. 

Well, somewhere in the gory pulp of flesh and blood.

"It couldn't have happened a little less messy? Maybe, even a little bit 'eroic? You know, I could 'ave saved some little old lady from getting a flowerpot in her 'ead or something?" he asks the tall, dark clad figure standing in the road.

"NOBODY GETS TO CHOOSE, I AM AFRAID." the figure answers dully, and Mr. Carter nods slowly, understanding. His spirit blurs and starts to slowly disappear.

"Yeah, I guess…. but…what was that thing?" he says gesturing to the remains of his body. 

"DOES IT MATTER" he asks. He could never understand why humans wanted to know what, or who killed them.

"Er….I guess not" Mr. Carter says and then he vanished.

It starts to rain, a heavy rain that drenches everything and everyone within minutes. It was not typical autumn rain, but just rain, typical for Ankh-Morpork. 

It drums profoundly on the roofs and splashes off the road. The water mixes it self with Mr. Carter's blood and carries it down the street until it vanishes in the sewer or the river (not that there was any difference). 

The moon starts to cloak it self in the dark clouds that drifts slowly over the sky.

In the distance, there is a howl.

Please review.


	2. Chapter one

Disclaimer: you all know I don't own any of the characters they belong to Terry Pratchett!

**Chapter one.**

Sleep slowly slipped away from her grasp and she felt consciousness race through her body. Her eyes darted open and she stared at the cracks in the roof. They are many, sneaking their way towards an old chandelier in the center of the roof.

She swung her legs over the bedside and placed them on the ground, immediately she withdrew her bare feet from the icy floor and crawled back under the warmth of her bedcovers.  The room was freezing and her breath turned to frost-mist, she then realized that the window is open, letting in the cold pre-winter air.

Last night had been a full moon, and she had spent the night prowling the city like she usually did. She hated night patrols, especially when winter approached, the ground is soggy and cold and it rains almost every night.

Sergeant Angua let her eyes trail over the floorboards and she saw small dank puddles on the floor. She had been soaking wet and dead tired when she returned to her room at Mrs. Cake's nearing dawn, and hadn't bothered cleaning up.  

Last night had been worse then normal because…

She frowned; suddenly the details of last night seemed fuzzy. She remembered that she had been on Night Patrol, and at one point she had been chasing a running figure from…

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and she heard her landlady yell.

"Oi, are you there?" 

"Yeah…" she replied, creeping out of her bed and towards her clothes.

"There is somebody asking for you that…" 

"Carrot? Why is he here?"

"Oi don't know that, he said he got concerned when you never showed up for work…" Mrs. Cake trailed off.  Angua tossed a tunic over her head and threw a glance through the window; the sun was already high on the gray sky.

"Oh…. I must have over-slept, tell him I will be right there" she replied, she heard Mrs. Cake walk down the stairs, and then grabbed her breastplate.

            "There was a murder last night" Carrot said, when he saw her coming down the stairs. 

"Nice to meet you to" Angua said, forgetting that 'ironic' was a word not listed in Carrot's dictionary.

"It is?" he asked and she rolled her eyes and said quickly.

"What's this about a murder?".

" Mr. Carter was found dead at the end of The Street of Cunning Artifacts…. you didn't hear anything did you?"

"No…. I was patrolling…." She trailed off and tried to remember what she had done last night, she was certain she had been on patrol, she just couldn't remember where. Why couldn't she remember?

"The shades….saw nothing, got soaked and" she sneezed and wiped her nose with the edge of her sleeve "and got a cold"

"Commander Vimes wants us down there on the double" Carrot said brightly and walked towards the door. Angua watched him leave, then wiped her nose one more time before following him.

            "There isn't much here, sir. The rain washed everything away," Cheery Littlebottom said as she stared at the corps, or at least the upper part of it. They had some trouble locating its head. One of its arms had been flung across the street and was now being poked at by her forensic assistance, Corporal Box. 

( "Do you think hiring a zombie as a forensic scientist is such a good idea" "Who else has better knowledge of the dead?")

"What do you recon killed him?" Vimes asked and Cheery looked at him funny "you mean apart from losing his head, arm and legs, and getting his spine broken?"

"I mean, what kind of weapon was used?" Vimes growled.

"I don't know, perhaps a really large knife or an axe…I won't know until I have studied… "

"Great, just what we need, another mad man running around"

"Well, who in this city isn't mad, sir?"

Just that time Captain Carrot and Sergeant Angua decided to show up. Well, they did not actually choose to show up, it was more in the line of Good Timing. 

Carrot saluted dutifully when he saw Vimes, and Cherry cast Angua a 'good-morning' nod, before hurrying over to her assistance, it looked like he was going to take the arm and replace it with his own. ("We DON'T take body parts lying on the ground")

"Anything?" Carrot asked and Vimes shook his head. "Any Clues that could lead us to his murder was washed away last night" the Commander said and fished up a cigar. 

"Not the Assassins…" Carrot said. It had been a relative slow week, the only murders committed had tie with the Assassin's Guild. 

Vimes shook his head. "They would never do anything this messy" he paused and took a deep drag from his cigar.

"I was thinking that Sergeant Angua might have a sniff around…." He trailed off and looked at the werewolf. Angua nodded and started to walk towards a nearby ally.

"Where there any reports of anything strange…. stranger then usual last night?" Vimes asked and Carrot shook his head "no sir"

"Do you know anybody who could want to kill Mr. Carter?"

"No, sir. I believe he was a carpenter; his daughter is a cook up at the University, no known connection to anything suspicious. " Carrot mused. Commander Vimes, and everybody else for that matter, had long ago given up trying to figure out how, or why Carrot knew everybody, he just did.

"No _known _connection, but I bet he was up to something fishy," Vimes said and Carrot frowned.

"No sir, he was a carpenter"

A few minutes later Angua emerged in her wolf form and started to sniff the ground.  She wandered around the body a couple of minutes before slowly walking down the street.

            Being a werewolf had many perks, she could hear almost across the street, she could see clearly as daytime in the dark, and all the smells of the world turned to colored mists. She let her nose trail over the cobles and drank in the scent of a horse, doings its business, flinched and sneezed. Neither Vimes nor Carrot seemed to notice.

There was the faint familiar color of blood, the bluish color of water and an old woodish scent as well, but it was barley smellable

There was no scent of fear. ' Perhaps he did not have time to be afraid' she thought.

She could feel her adrenaline start to pump as the blood scent twirled through her body. The wolf inside her was always difficult to fight right after a full moon.

Suddenly she saw another color a blackish glow, with the hint of doggie brown. It was stronger then blood, meaning that whoever it was, had been there after the murder. She frowned (if wolf features can frown) and started to follow it down the street.

As she walked away from the corps the sent grew stronger, but soon other colors started to twist its way up the street. It was the aroma of everyday life in Ankh-Morpork, and not a very pleasant smell, but the blackish smell cut its way through the other odors.

Angua did not know how long she walked, and now and then she lost trace of where she was.  She was not yet familiar with the city and sometimes forgot how big it was. She dodged away from the moving carts or the hurrying people and small kids wanting to pet her. She hated that. 

The blackish scent suddenly disappeared into an alley, and she hesitated. Walking into any mysterious alley was not normally a good idea, but then again she was not a normal person. Or, really a person for that matter. 

            The alley was empty except for a couple of crates, and a tall looming figure, leaning casually against the wall. She saw the glowing light from a cigarette, and the figure stepped into her view. It was a man, broad shouldered and he was just as tall as Carrot. He was dressed in a long brown coat and had an old brown hat that looked like it was rooted to his head.

Her body tensed and she felt her body take a defensive position and she let out a deep, throaty, growl. The man flicked the cigarette away, sighed and then spoke in perfect canine.

"I know you are a werewolf and can rip my jugulars out" 

She was taken completely by surprise and did, as many does in that kind of situation, stared at the stranger in front of her. He started to roam around for another cigarette and lit it, while waiting for her reply.

"You are a werewolf?" Angua asked shocked. There were only a couple of werewolves in the city. They usually preferred to live in Uberwald or alone where the chances for the pitchforks and torches were smaller. She thought she knew all of them.

"The name 's Lewton".*

Please review.

*Lewton is the main character in the computer game Discworld Noir.


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